Views from Medina Road

It's curious to see gibes from Andrew Wheeler about publications who've already released 'best of year' lists in November, since November isn't yet the end of the year -- what are they thinking? Surely Andrew realizes that reviewers for such publications get advance galleys of virtually everything, and have in fact seen every book worth considering for a best of the year list by October or November. Just as Locus reviewers, for example, are now, in November and December, busy reading books to be published next March or April...

By the same token, I've always admired the efficiency of the National Book Award process, which manage to consider eligible books from a given year and announce its winners in... November. Note that two of this year's winners, Richard Powers' THE ECHO MAKER and M.T. Anderson's THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, VOLUME I: THE POX PARTY, had official publication dates of October! The books were barely in the stores by the time the awards were announced. The extreme contrast, of course, is the protracted nomination and voting process behind the Nebula Awards, which allows a trophy to go to a book published more than two years previously...